This invention relates generally to the process for treating fruits such as plantains to improve their taste and texture and enable them to be preserved as desired. More particularly the present invention is concerned with the process for treating plantains and the products produced thereby with a fruit juice that impregnates the plantain to produce a unique edible plantain product.
The plantain is a fruit belonging to the genus Musa and is related to the more widely known and more popular edible fruit, the banana. The plantain has generally been considered to be a stable in a diet of many people in South America and Caribbean countries. In appearance the plantain is similar to the banana and its growth characteristics, harvesting and propagation are substantially identical to that of the banana. However, its taste and texture differ from the banana to such an extent that typically the plantain is looked upon as a vegetable in a sense that it is only consumed by cooking a green or unripe plantain rather than in a fresh ripe form as with the banana. The reason for the plantain being consumed in an unripened cooked state rather than as a fresh ripe product is due to the flavor and texture of the plantain in its fresh ripe state. The external appearance of the ripe plantain is generally recognized to be yellow similar to that of a banana. An essentially black plantain, like an essentially black sinned banana is considered overripe. If the plantain were attempted to be eaten in a green or unripe state the flavor is even more unattractive and would meet even more limited acceptance when compared with the popular banana.
In spite of the recognized disadvantages, plantains have been an important food for many countries such as Puerto Rico where plantains may thrive in the mountains with the almost inaccessible terrain indigenous to Puerto Rico. The Puerto Rican economy would benefit significantly if there was an improvement in the food production and if the plantain could be made to utilize fully the otherwise non-arable land, the plantain could be important to the revitalization of Puerto Rico and other countries in Caribbean.
Before plantains could achieve the status of an important, if not vital, agricultural crop, the plantains would have to be available year round, but the plantain crop is typically harvested in the few months of late summer and early fall resulting in huge surpluses following harvest. Ideally, the plantains would be shipped as a food product to other geographic areas particularly the United States. To date, however, the United States consumption of plantains is insignificant because the flavor and texture characteristics of the plantain have not been accepted by the typical North American.
To improve the taste and texture of the plantains, additives were thought to be useful to make the plantains more palatable, however, the plantain in its typical unripe state did not accept additives, such as fruit juice, due to the substantially impenetrable outer tissue of the plantain. The tissue of the plantain in cross section is similar to a honeycomb wherein the contents of each cell within the honeycomb is generally maintained by a liner that varies in its porosity. The process of ripening the plantain promotes the action of enzymes which in addition to converting starch to sugar also have been found to make the cell walls more permeable. More importantly, the middle lamella is partially dissolved accounting for some of the softening of the ripening fruit. Attempts to impregnate the plantain with the fruit juice when the plantain is unripe would not produce the desirable impregnation. Impregnation tests conducted on plantains attempted to be impregnated with fruit juice tended to verify the supposition that the impregnation is viable only when the cell contents of a fairly high percentage of soluble material, as would be present when the plantain achieved a particular stage of ripeness. It appeared that in the unripe state, the cell wall membranes associated with the cell wall were impenetrable to dissolved solids contained in the fruit juice impregnate. While it is known that the ripening process involves an enzymatic change of starch to sugar the particular relationship between the stages of ripeness and impregnation were not recognized.